


Cautionary Tales, or, Death Will Come If You're Not Good

by izzybeth



Category: Gashlycrumb Tinies - Edward Gorey
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Off-screen Animal Abuse, Off-screen Domestic Violence, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzybeth/pseuds/izzybeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naughty children and their various untimely ends. But you're not a naughty child, are you? (PLEASE HEED THE WARNING)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cautionary Tales, or, Death Will Come If You're Not Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [berry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/berry/gifts).



> WARNING: This fic contains wacky Edward Gorey child demise, which I of course had no idea would be such an awful subject. There's nothing graphic, but the subject matter is taken not seriously at all. If it's going to upset you, PLEASE DO NOT READ. Leave it until June or something.
> 
> Also warning for character death, non-graphic violence, child death, off-screen domestic violence, off-screen animal abuse, and substance abuse. Please god don't hate me forever.
> 
> Thanks to N and C for beta duty, and also thanks to elynross for some last minute hand-holding and reassurance.

Amy knew she hadn't the best sense of balance. She also knew that the carpet on the staircase was very old and worn shiny and slippery. Her governess had told her a hundred times at least never to run down the stairs in her stocking feet. But she hadn't, really she hadn't. What Amy had done was run down the landing in her stocking feet, stopped just short of the top step, and executed her best ballerina pirouette, because that was the best game ever. Only she lost her balance as she came out of it, and look where that had gotten her.

\---

Basil adored the zoo. He loved the animals, of course, but he also loved the other people, and the brilliant toys they sold, and he loved being outside, and he particularly loved that his parents were so unobservant that he could wangle two ice creams out of each of them without the other being any the wiser. Also they never cared when Basil would climb up onto the safety railing separating him from the lions, the gorilla, and the two enormous grizzly bears.

Perhaps they should have cared a bit more.

\---

Despite the years of meticulous medical attention, despite gallons of liniments and salves, despite wheelbarrowsful of pills, despite hours of fortifying sunshine and gentle exercise, Clara was not a well child. She was never able to run about and play outdoors, and her best friends were books instead of other children. Toward her premature end, she was capable only of lying on the green chaise longue in the sunroom, gazing out the window at the flowers in the garden. She did not speak, she rarely ate or drank, and one sunny morning in May, Clara was simply gone.

\---

In retrospect, a swift moving sleigh pulled through a blizzard by two strong and sturdy ponies was not the most appropriate place for Desmond and his elder brother to hold a lively discussion over which man was the more impressive: Holmes or Watson. Desmond's stout defense of the good doctor infuriated his brother, who, despite his admiration for the famous deductionist, was not terribly gifted in the arts of logic. In his rage, Desmond's brother whipped the poor ponies to an even quicker pace, and then turned, seized Desmond by the collar, and shoved him out the side of the sleigh. Desmond hit his head on a rock hidden by the snow, and knew no more.

\---

Ernest had always been a talkative boy. He babbled incessantly as an infant, and was producing perfectly grammatical sentences by the age of two. He read voraciously, and his vocabulary rivaled that of a professor of English by the age of nine. He talked as though he would never stop-- while he read, while he played, while he slept, and while he ate. His parents begged him to cease from holding forth while chewing, but nothing would deter young Ernest from making his views heard. The peaches they had after dinner one evening changed all that, of course. Ernest was proclaiming his opinions on the works of one Mr Darwin and his theories, and neglected to masticate the peach half before swallowing. None of the guests knew how to perform the heimlich maneuver.

\---

The small pond behind the house was Fanny's very favorite place to play. She could always evade her nurse in the tall cattails and clumps of grasses. She loved to take off her shoes and stockings, hike up her skirts, and wiggle her toes in the squishy mud at the bottom of the pond. She loved standing in the water, stirring up the bottom, and feeling all the little fish come to swim around her feet, nibbling at the particles and her toes. She loved watching the frogs catch dragonflies with their stretchy tongues. She loved measuring the huge spiderweb every day, to see if it had got any bigger. She loved listening to the wrens and swallows sing as they swooped through the air, catching insects. Fanny loved her little pond more than anything, and would have lived there if she could have.

One evening Fanny did not appear for dinner, despite her promise to do so, clean and dressed, in return for her being allowed to spend all day at the pond. The family ventured out, lanterns and skirts lifted high, to find her floating face down in the water, leeches covering every inch of her skin.

\---

George had never been the brightest of boys. He also possessed a great love of squeezing himself into the smallest spaces imaginable. The maid often discovered him on a shelf in the airing cupboard. He also hid from the nurse and his mother in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, the gap between the wall and the clawfooted bathtub, and under his father's wingbacked chair in the library.

It was there George thought how wonderful it would be if he were able to lie flat under the great persian rug on the library floor. He would never be found! However, humans are not meant to be two-dimensional, and George choked on a century of dust before even getting close.

\---

Kids these days were always flush. More than they had any right to be, it seemed. The man in the shadows slowly drew a rather disgusting handkerchief from his pocket and sneaked up to the mouth of the alleyway. The young boy standing there was clean and obviously well-bred, and would most assuredly be missed, so the man would just have to be careful not to kill him.

A bit more careful than that, the man thought, as he rifled through the boy's clothes, looking for the telltale glint of pound coins. He found not even a penny for his trouble, though he did find that the inside of the boy's hatband was printed with PROPERTY OF HECTOR. Little git.

\---

The family summer home was on a large lake, and Ida was finally old enough to take a little rowboat out by herself. The day was beautiful-- sunny, not a cloud to be seen, and only a very gentle breeze. The water lapped at the pebbly beach lazily. Perfect conditions for a young girl to have her first adventure in a boat on her own. Ida could barely keep from jumping up and down in excitement while her uncle dragged the boat into the water for her. He waved as she rowed away from shore.

She hadn't been explicitly told to stay within sight of the house, so Ida pretended she was too far out to hear her uncle's shouts. She rowed the little boat around a bend in the shoreline, and suddenly she was utterly, delightfully alone. The hills rose high above her, hawks soared above them, and trout jumped in the cold, clear water. Ida pulled the oars inside the boat, kicked her feet up, and drifted.

Light drizzle on her face made her open her eyes, and she sat up with a start. The sky had darkened with clouds, and a strong wind was blowing whitecaps across the lake's surface. Her hair and clothes were damp with rain, which was coming down heavier every moment. Ida shoved the oars into the water, but the wind was too strong. Lightning cracked across the sky, urging her to pull harder at the oars, but she couldn't make the boat break through the choppy waves.

The rain suddenly came down in sheets, and Ida was thrown from her seat when the boat hit a rock hidden under the surface. She flailed and fell into the dark water. The little rowboat, having a rather large hole in it, sank beyond Ida's reach. Her dress and shoes dragged her down. She fought against the weight as hard as she could, but Ida was only a little girl, and soon she was pulled under the water so deep that she could not tell which way was up.

Ida's lungs burned. She had to breathe in. She mustn't breathe in! She breathed in.

\---

The high shelf in the pantry was completely forbidden to young James, which of course made it all the more attractive. A row of bottles sat upon this shelf, the colored glass sparking in the afternoon light. James longed to take them down and arrange them in patterns on the stone floor of the kitchen.

One cold winter's day, James was alone. The rest of the family was cozied up in the sitting room in front of a blazing fire. No one wanted to spend time in the kitchen with its hard stone floor. James seized his opportunity.

He dragged a chair from the table to the pantry, then piled the seat high with cookbooks. Thinking ahead, he took a bowl up the chair with him, since he knew he didn't have enough pocket space for all those pretty little bottles.

Once he got them off the shelf, James delighted in forming squares, circles, stars, and spirals with the bottles. They looked even better in a patch of sun, throwing colored light across the floor.

James knew that one of the red bottles held a delicious something that his mother gave him when he was feeling ill. James did not feel ill, but, he reasoned, a bit of preventative measures never did any harm.

Unfortunately, James did not know that the other red bottle held lye for cleaning. He chose poorly.

\---

The snow was untouched on the ground, and the forest was quite wonderfully silent, save for the occasional chirp from a chilly sparrow. Kate stepped carefully, not wanting to disturb more of the pristine snow cover than she had to. The snow creaked as she put her weight on one foot, then the other, walking slowly through the wood.

A squirrel darted past and caught Kate's eye. She decided, on a whim, to follow it. It ran over hillocks and through bushes, up and down trees, and once through a hollow log. Kate ran after the squirrel on light feet, not caring that she barely knew where she was or how to get home.

It was pure bad luck that Kate followed the squirrel onto the range of an axe-throwing contest.

\---

The entire family agreed that Leo was an extremely adorable baby. Enormous brown eyes, chubby arms and legs, and a sweet, infectious baby giggle. Of course, he loved to put things in his mouth, but every baby did that, so Leo's loving parents didn't worry.

By the time Leo was four, he had not outgrown the habit. In fact, it had got even worse, since he was able to run about the house and evade his caretakers. He managed to get into a truly absurd amount of things: cooking utensils, mothballs, ashes from the fireplace, strips of paint peeling off the kitchen door. His parents did try to keep a better eye on little Leo once they caught him gnawing on the very patient family dog, but neither could keep track of the boy at all hours, and those shiny silver thumbtacks were just too much of a temptation for Leo's big brown eyes.

\---

Maud hated lessons, but read voraciously, given that the material was in the topic that interested her most: mythical creatures of the ocean. Maud simply could not read enough about mermaids, selkies, krakens, and other incredible denizens of the deep.

When Maud's parents told her of an impending summer trip to the seaside, she nearly drove her tutor mad with questions about imaginary beings. Was it true that mermaids could not come above the water's surface? Did krakens have gills? Were selkies very depressed all the time? The family finally left, and the tutor breathed a sigh of relief.

Maud spent every day on the end of a rocky jetty off the beach, staring out at the breakers as though she expected to see a sea serpent emerge from the waves. Her parents could not drag her away, not for meals, not for the carnival rides and games on the boardwalk. She only returned to the hotel to sleep when the sun set and the ocean air became cold.

One morning, the sun sparkled brilliantly off the waves, which were bigger and louder than usual in the gusty winds. Maud took her place upon the rocks, diligently shading her eyes against the dazzle and scanning the sea.

Her foot slipped on a loose stone as she found a more comfortable position, and when she caught her balance again, an enormous tentacle wriggled at her from beyond the breakers. It was slimy, greyish green, covered in suckers, and as tall as the ferris wheel on the boardwalk. Maud fell instantly in love.

She climbed to the highest rock on the jetty, jumped up and down, waved, and shouted. The tentacle turned toward her, and she squeaked in excitement. It slid gracefully through the breakers, the tip trained upon Maud like a periscope. It came closer, close enough that Maud could see the creature's gigantic body in the water, close enough to touch.

Maud lifted a hand.

The tentacle wrapped itself around her arm, and swept her into the sea.

\---

Neville found all the toys made for boys his age unbearably tedious, and turned to books instead. Neville read them alphabetically by author, but lost any spark of interest in those only halfway through the Fs. He claimed that all authors, no matter the subject, were tiresome blowhards, only interested in seeing their own words on a page (and getting paid for writing them).

Every pastime his family and friends attempted to interest him in, Neville tried, and sooner than later discarded, complaining of understimulation. 

Neville's favorite place to sit, inasmuch as he had a favorite anything at all, was the window seat in the front room. From there, he could slouch against the cushions and still see over the sill out onto the street. Not that he was interested in the goings-on of the neighborhood, no, everyone in the world was dull as dust, as far as Neville was concerned. But the window seat was comfortable, and he kept a small pile of books, ones he didn't actively hate, on the floor nearby.

He slumped down into the cushions. A horse stamped its hoof in the dirt of the street. Neville sighed, and let his current book slip from his fingers into his lap. He sighed again. A pretty girl stepped down from a hansom cab and paid the driver. Neville let his head tilt back onto the window ledge. He sighed again, closed his eyes, and sighed until there were no more sighs left.

\---

Olive and her brothers were a rambunctious lot, and their mother despaired of ever making Olive into a respectable lady. She could almost always be found tearing through the fields with her brothers in a pair of borrowed trousers, hair flying free in the breeze.

In retrospect, the mock circus act they put on was a terrible idea, considering that Olive's older brother was not a professional knife-thrower, they couldn't actually pinch any knives from the kitchen (just an old awl they found in the shed), and Olive hadn't wanted to be the lovely assistant in the first place. She said she hadn't the right demeanour, and could she be the daring tightrope walker instead? Her brother said no.

\---

It was past midnight, and Prue's papa still had not come home. Prue's mama had put her to bed, and then had sat down by the stove in the tiny kitchen, wringing her hands. Prue hated to see her mama on nights like these, which were becoming more and more frequent ever since papa was made redundant at the factory. When he did eventually return to their little row house, he was always in a foul mood, smelling toxic and awful, and he would shout at mama, at the neighbors, at the cat, until he fell asleep in a kitchen chair. Prue stayed still and silent in her bed when papa came home.

That night, mama went to bed before papa returned. That never happened, and Prue became frightened. What if papa couldn't come home? What if he was hurt? What if he was-- no, that was unthinkable. Prue decided the only thing she could possibly do was to get up and go look for her papa herself.

She crept out of the house and ran up the street in her nightgown. Her bare feet quickly turned to ice blocks on the cobblestones. The night air cut right through the thin cotton of her nightgown, and she shivered.

Prue peered in the smoky, grimy windows of every tavern and public house she knew, looking for her papa. Finally, she made out a familiar silhouette through the front window of the Horse & Groom. She ran to the door and threw it open wide, shouting loudly for her papa to come home that instant.

Unfortunately, another man took the opportunity to throw a solid left hook at Prue's papa's jaw in his distraction. Prue was flattened in the tavern brawl that followed.

\---

When Quentin and his friends from the village on the edge of the moor got together, their very favorite game to play was Jane Eyre. It had everything-- a brilliant heroine, physical and emotional suffering, a mad wife in an attic, a tragic climax, and a happy ending despite it all. Quentin was very much looking forward to that afternoon because it was his turn to play Jane.

He sneaked out of the house, his mother's best white lace tablecloth tucked under his jacket, because how could he play a decent Jane with nothing for the winds of the moor to tug mournfully at?

The mad wife in the attic discovery scene came, which Quentin played with quiet, tragic dignity. At the end of it, he ran off onto the moor, just like Jane.

The only sign of Quentin anyone ever found was the lace tablecloth, dirtied and torn, caught on some dead bracken.

\---

Even from the moment of her birth, Rhoda had never been a calm, content child. She cried through infancy, threw tantrums through her toddlerhood; and just as such behavior would have become intolerable, Rhoda learned that the world was an unjust place. She discovered a multitude of things to be incensed over. She learned that poor children were cold and unhappy at Christmas, and that bison in America were being hunted to extinction, and that factories and automobiles were turning the air of London yellow and the water of the Thames brown. Rhoda felt she had a great many things to be angry about, and on top of it all, she was only a child with no political, financial, or military power. More than anything else, Rhoda hated being helpless.

The last straw was, apparently, a small article in the Times about a young horse whose master whipped it so hard that it died right in the street. Rhoda's face warmed. She felt her body overheating. The newspaper she held began to smoke, and she dropped it. Before anyone could so much as call for water, Rhoda burst into righteous flames and crumbled to ash. And she was angry about that, too.

\---

Nothing, it seemed, in Susan's young life would ever go right. Some nights she lay awake for hours, unable to fall asleep. She would wake up late, and breakfast would be either cold or gone. She hated all her dresses, the ugly, ill-fitting things, and Nurse would make her _go outside_ in them. Her shoes pinched, her hair tangled in the stiff, unpleasant breeze, the sun was too bright, the electric lights too dim, the chairs too hard, the cushions too soft.

Susan spent most of her days in her room, kicking her heels against the rungs of her chair and scowling, silently fuming at how utterly unfair her entire life was.

One day, Susan could take no more of this great injustice. Her boots wouldn't button, so she threw them across the room. The toast was cold, so she fed it to the dog right in front of Father. She flat out refused to leave the house with Nurse, and clung to the piano when Nurse picked her up. Susan yelled as loud as she could, kicking and squirming when Nurse pried her fingers from around the piano leg. She screamed and wailed and thrashed and writhed, even after Nurse gave up and dumped her on the floor.

Afterward, Nurse said she'd never seen a child's face turn that particular shade of blue.

\---

Titus was an extremely careful, conscientious boy: not by nature, but because his life rather depended upon it. His parents were both Very Well Connected, as they say, and thus there were a great many people who wished them ill. Titus never ate or drank anything his parents didn't watch being prepared. His clothes and belongings were all thoroughly checked over before being given to him. Every person he knew (his tutor, the butler, the maids), he knew to be completely trustworthy because the man his daddy worked for was very scary.

The day Titus turned seven, his parents threw him a wonderful party. All his friends from the neighborhood came to visit, and Titus received many lovely gifts, all of which were whisked away to be searched and tested before he could touch them.

The doorbell rang, but no one seemed to hear it. Titus wandered alone to the front hall, leaving all the guests and the servants and his parents in the parlor. He opened the door, but nothing was there but a large box, wrapped in brown paper, tied with twine. It bore a large cardstock tag that simply said 'TITUS'.

Titus picked it up and brought it inside. He untied the twine, and lifted a corner of the paper. He shouldn't have.

\---

Una set out all the ingredients in front of her: a little cherry tart, a spoonful of custard, a few chunks of pineapple, a shredded piece of roast turkey, two pieces of toffee, and a slice of hot buttered toast from breakfast. She threw it all into a large bowl, and mixed it up together until she had a thick, beige, evil-smelling paste. Una was sure the book had said 'potion,' not 'paste,' so she added water to thin it, and then filled a small glass bottle with the stuff.

Still, it was missing something... of course. She scribbled quickly on a bit of paper, and tied it to the neck of the bottle with ribbon. 'DRINK ME', it said.

Nothing to do now but test it. Una lifted the bottle to her lips, and drank. It was awful, utterly foul, nothing like the book had said it would be. Nevertheless, she choked it all down.

And it worked! Una shrank with speed, down below the tabletop, below the seat of the chair, down, down, until she couldn't have been more than an inch high! She was a genius, a chemistry genius! She couldn't wait to show her family. They'd said she was a silly girl, that it couldn't be done, but hah! Una had proved them wrong! And she would tell them so if she could get them to notice a girl no more than an inch high.

As it turned out, her family were all very proud of her, and treated her just the same as if she were still four feet tall, with minor adjustments. She bathed in the bathroom sink, which she loved because it was like proper swimming in deliciously warm water. Unfortunately, in her condensed state, she neglected to climb out before the plug was pulled. Tiny Una could not be found in the U-bend like a lost wedding ring.

\---

At eight years of age, Victor had ignored the call of the road for long enough. His parents saw him off to school one morning, and never saw him again.

Victor ran straight for the railroad tracks heading out of his plebeian village, and waited for a freight train to pass so he could jump onto it and let it carry him away from his mundane little life.

The train approached, just like Victor knew it would. He sprinted alongside it, and then made a great leap.

It wasn't great enough., and the train's passengers felt not even a jolt as the wheels ran Victor down.

\---

Winnie loved winter. She loved staying outside in the cold all day, her hair wet from snow and exertion; coat, scarf, and mittens soaked through. The snow that day was the best she'd ever seen: thick and fluffy and pure white.

The young men had shoveled all the snow off the pond in the square, and all the local children were ice skating, building snow men, or having snowball fights.

As the sky darkened and the snow kept falling, the children trickled home for hot meals and warm, dry clothes. Winnie refused to leave her wonderful snow. She buried herself in a huge drift, as though she was at a warm beach and the snow was golden sand. From her hiding place in the snowdrift, she watched the snow fall against the black night sky. It was beautiful.

They found her in the spring when the snowdrift melted, a rapt expression frozen on her face.

\---

They said the end times were nigh, but no one believed them. Most people were dead, and those who weren't were hiding-- in cellars, in attics, in hidden rooms.

Xerxes's family hadn't believed the rumors, and they had not survived the initial purge. Xerxes had hidden himself in the pantry, and there he was still. It wasn't a bad place to be for an apocalypse, really. He had access to food and water, and he simply sat and waited for someone to discover him.

But no one came. Xerxes rationed out the remaining food. By then he was competing with the household vermin, and he was sure that, as the superior human, he deserved to live more than the mice did.

The mice, however, had other ideas. Once the food stores finally ran out, Xerxes found himself cornered in the scullery by a disturbingly large pack of mice. Though they were largely herbivorous creatures, mice were rather adaptable, able to eat all sorts of non-vegetative material. Xerxes was just such an item.

\---

The ruined castle on the hilltop was the favorite place for the children of the town to play and explore. The great hall with its roof open to the sky, the courtyard and outbuildings, the scores of passages and smaller rooms; it was so exciting to run from chamber to chamber, knowing that there was centuries-old treasure to be found. And if the treasure refused to give itself up, a game of Marco Polo was a good fallback.

Yorick wound up as It, blindfold and all for he could not be trusted not to cheat. He bumbled about the courtyard, shouting for his mates. They were all up in the ramparts, shouting back and quietly giggling at poor Yorick, who could not find the staircase.

It was all terribly funny until someone's careless elbow collided with a loose stone, which plummented down to the courtyard. Yorick never did find the staircase.

\---

Gin, it was always gin for Zillah. She couldn't tolerate vodka, beer was boring, wine was pedestrian, whiskey was low-class. But Zillah adored gin. She loved the smell, the juniper bite on her tongue. She loved gin and tonics, tom collinses, anything her bartender could invent with gin in it.

One night, after closing down her favorite pub, Zillah stumbled home and collapsed on the chaise longue without so much as removing her shoes. She felt ill. Drunk, of course, that was nothing out of the ordinary, and of course she'd had her share of hangovers, but this sensation was new to her, and entirely unwelcome.

Zillah considered crawling to the telephone and calling the doctor, but couldn't work up the energy. If she had, she might have lived, but it wasn't to be. No ten year old girl's liver was ever meant to be so abused. On the bright side, the story of her demise spread far and wide, and no tavern was ever again allowed to serve children.


End file.
